AFDO Application for RFA-FD-20-028 - PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT The origin of this cooperative agreement announcement is from the development of the Retail Food Safety Association Collaborative (Collaborative). The Collaborative was formed in 2019 after a series of discussions among the retail food regulatory associations (Association of Food and Drug Officials (AFDO), Conference for Food Protection (CFP), National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO), National Environmental Health Association (NEHA), FDA, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) about the need to have a collaborative approach toward retail food safety to fully leverage each organization working in this space to maximize the effectiveness. The major AFDO proposed projects include: ? Better understanding retail food safety state regulatory program environment through surveys and interviews. ? Reducing the occurrence of retail foodborne illness risk factors by: o Identification of foodborne illness interventions used at the state level, categorizing, and evaluating the interventions for effectiveness; o Promote adoption of recent version of the Food Code; o Promote and assess implementation of risk-based inspections; o Develop and promote strategies to improve active managerial control and food safety culture in retail foods through owner, operator, and manager training; o Collating multi-state inspectional data and analyzing for trends among brands and between states; and o Improve response to retail foodborne illness outbreaks including Illness mitigation through better coordination of tools, environmental sampling training, and promotion of the National Environmental Assessment System (NEARS). ? Improve communications and availability of resources for state, local, territorial, and tribal food safety programs.